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Pocahontas Island in its early days became a haven for free blacks and later for the former slaves freed under the Emancipation Proclamation. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Photo by Jay Paul
I’d long been curious about Petersburg’s Pocahontas Island, named for Chief Powhatan’s young daughter who befriended Jamestown’s early settlers, but I knew little about it until the Episcopal priest at my church told me of its rich African American history.
This was a good excuse to make the short drive to Petersburg — to a place different from past visits, when I’d seen attractions ranging from historic Centre Hill Mansion and an engaging old railroad yard to the contemporary Trapezium Brewing Co. I had also visited the 18th-century plantation house Battersea before it was purchased by the city in 1985, and I’ve enjoyed some of the city’s diverse dining options.
Pocahontas Island, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is easy to find after you leave Interstate 95 at Exit 54/East Washington Street. With a friend in tow, I followed the signs, ultimately crossing a small bridge to the unassuming destination with five streets. The island is now a peninsula in the Appomattox River across from downtown Petersburg. I drove slowly past some of the approximately 50 houses here, primarily staying on Witten Street, where words and pictures related to Nat Turner covered a pink-and-yellow-painted house. (I explained to my younger friend that Turner was hanged in 1831 for leading an insurrection of the enslaved in nearby Southampton County. His story inspired Virginia author William Styron’s 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” based on Turner’s firsthand confessions to his local lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray.)
Richard Stewart, the unofficial mayor of Pocahontas Island and proprietor of the Pocahontas Island Black History Museum (Photo by Jay Paul)
The sign in front of the adjacent house — “Pocahontas Island Black History Museum” — bore the name of Richard A. Stewart, often described as the island’s unofficial mayor. This was the place we wanted to visit, and sure enough, inside was a copy of Styron’s book, among thousands of items that could never be taken in during a single visit. Stewart opened the door and told us that he was preparing to go out and cut the grass on several lots, but he welcomed us inside to see and learn whatever we’d come for. He made no reference to a cost for admission or tour but spent more than an hour answering our questions and showing us around the downstairs rooms plus three rooms upstairs off a hallway — every nook crammed with photos, newspaper clippings and artifacts Stewart has unearthed from nearby grounds, all related to Black history and the American Civil War.
Orphaned at age 16, Stewart says he left the island for a military and civil service career, returning to buy his first house in 2002. By 2003, he had amassed a collection of historical items that enabled him to open the house at 224 Witten St. as a museum. He now owns eight houses on the island; his daughter owns five or six. They rent out some of them, he says, estimating the present population at about 60 people, down from several hundred in the mid-20th century. The only brick building on the island — the Jarratt House, built circa 1819-20 — was bought by the city a few years ago and stabilized, but restoration is on hold pending funding.
Stewart can enlighten and entertain visitors with as many stories as they have time for, but he didn’t state as fact anything for which he lacked substantiation. He told us how the Appomattoc tribe of the Powhatan Confederacy had always lived on this land, which became an island in the late 1700s when a canal was built. (Nearby Dutch Gap also has Pocahontas associations.) The island eventually became a safe enclave for free Black people, and later the enslaved who were freed after Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and moved here.
The pink and yellow house next door — the circa-1837-38 Walthall House — might have harbored fugitives from slavery, he says. Elizabeth Kostelny, CEO of Preservation Virginia, says the organization included Pocahontas Island on Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Sites in 2014 because of its remarkable history “as well as its association with the Underground Railroad,” which helped enslaved people successfully escape to the North. Coffins with false bottoms were among the ingenious ways in which slaves fled the South, Stewart says.
He held up iron shackles used on the enslaved along the Appomattox River and said they were donated with Ku Klux Klan robe displayed upstairs. Perhaps because Stewart grew up here, he speaks casually of its history, which belies his passionate belief in the sacred nature of Pocahontas Island’s 66 acres as a place of Virginia’s Black history.
“I feel the spirit of this place,” he says. “It’s ironic that Petersburg was a very busy pre-Civil War slave market while also having one of the highest populations of free Blacks in Virginia.” This, he explains, was because a few planters, in the spirit of liberty following the Revolutionary War, freed their slaves, and these newly freed people needed a place to settle where they felt they wouldn’t be captured and re-enslaved.
The Exchange Building in Petersburg (Photo courtesy Mojo Hand)
Across the River
There are no restaurants or shops to explore on Pocahontas Island, so cross back over the Appomattox River and head to downtown Petersburg. Food options to explore include the Petersburg location of Croaker’s Spot for its friendly staff and generous portions of seafood and soul food in a rustic atmosphere. A few blocks over, there’s Saucy’s Sit-Down Bar.B.Q. for chicken, ribs and other barbecue staples, served in a minimalist industrial setting. Takeout is an option, and there are picnic tables on the grounds. Behind Saucy’s is Buttermilk Bake Shop, where you’ll find from-scratch cakes, cupcakes, cookies and other delights. Share a slice of hummingbird cake and be sure to pick up a couple of peanut butter treats for your pooch. Walk off your calories with a stroll along the Petersburg side of the river and learn more about the community from a series of signs at Patton Park. Delve deeper into local history at the historic Exchange Building and Petersburg Visitors Center.
